Various optical units have been used, each of which has an optical module for photographing mounted thereon. In order to restrain disturbance of a photographed image due to a shake of a user's hand or a vibration, such an optical unit includes a shake correction drive mechanism structured to swing an optical module, thereby correcting a shake. Such an optical unit also includes a gimbal mechanism disposed between a fixed body and a movable body on which the optical module is mounted. The gimbal mechanism serves as a support mechanism for swingably supporting the movable body with respect to the fixed body. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2015-064501 discloses an optical unit with a shake correction function including a gimbal mechanism of this type.
The gimbal mechanism disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2015-064501 includes a gimbal spring (a movable frame) in a rectangular frame shape, and swing support parts each structured to support the gimbal spring. Of two sets of the swing support parts provided diagonally on the gimbal spring, one set is provided on a fixed body whereas the other set is provided on a movable body. The gimbal spring includes supporting point parts which are supported by the swing support parts, and connecting parts each of which connects two supporting point parts to each other and includes a meandering part.
By virtue of the meandering parts, the gimbal spring (the movable frame) is allowed to have both of a spring characteristic in a plane direction and a spring characteristic in a direction perpendicular to the plane direction. Depending on applications of an optical unit with a shake correction function, however, an excessive spring characteristic to be effected by a meandering part is sometimes unwanted. For example, a shift amount of a movable body to which an external impact has been applied is sometimes required to be reduced. However, gimbal springs shaped to meet such a requirement have not been proposed yet.